When the next Mars rover launches in 2020, it will sport a sidekick: a football-sized scout helicopter.
Mars’s atmosphere is 1 percent as dense as Earth’s, so the copter will have to fly at the equivalent of 100,000 feet — 60,000 feet higher than any Earth-bound chopper has ever flown.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
Mars 2020 Rover Mission To Include Scout Helicopter
On Aug. 6, 2012, a new rover will touch down on Mars — bigger, badder and bristling with more gear than a spelunker convention. Although rocking the same suspension system and basic design, Curiosity, aka the “monster truck of science,” is so much heftier than its predecessors that NASA and JPL had to invent an entirely new way to land it: one part HALO jump, one part rocket-hovering sky crane. Its mission: investigate if the right conditions exist, or ever have, to support microbial life.